Fidelity
by Chosen Twilight
Summary: Roxas' love life is...a disaster. He's trapped in a constant cycle of breaking up and making up with his boyfriend, so Sora takes it upon himself to straightened things out for him. After all, Sora know what's best for Roxas in the end, right? akuroku
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Fidelity

**Pairings: **Axel x Roxas, Sora x Kairi, and any other minor ones I decide to throw in.

**Disclaimer: **Kingdom Hearts belongs to Square Enix and Disney, and that's definitely not me.

Warnings include the classically overdone alternate universe Kingdom Hearts cliché, boy love (though you won't be seeing much of it for a few chapters), and Roxas' bad mouth.

**Summary: **Roxas' love life is...a disaster. He's trapped in a constant cycle of breaking up and making up with his unfaithful boyfriend. Then he moves in with his mother and brother, and Sora takes it upon himself to straightened things out for him. After all, Sora knows what's best for Roxas in the end...right?

Chapter One

Roxas gazed out the window, his stare falling on the robin's egg blue, two-story split-level across the street with a disheartened sigh. His blue eyes continued down the road to the other houses, most of which were perfectly identical, except for a few variations in the shade of pastel they had chosen or the type of flowers growing in their impeccably landscaped front lawns. There was of course the handful of houses whose owners had dared to be bolder than the others, their houses painted a brighter shade of chartruce, or with vibrant pink trim and shutters. Obviously, these were the most hated of the neighbors, because they were lowering everyone else's property value.

"Hey, Rox, how's the unpacking coming?"

He turned to face the body belonging to the voice which had snapped him out of his reverie, his brother Sora. The tone of his question had been sincere, but there was a mischievous- almost taunting- glint in Sora's eyes. Considering that Roxas' three bags were sitting by his feet on the floor, still zippered shut and completely forgotten until that moment, the look was understandable.

Roxas shrugged noncommittally, "I'll take stuff out as I need it. That ought to get it all unpacked…eventually."

"With all the clothes you have? I'd say that'll take until it's time to pack it all away again for college. But on second thought, don't bother taking them all out. You need some new clothes anyway, some that are less hideous than what you currently wear."

"My clothes are _not_ hideous. I mean, look who's talking." Sora wore khaki shorts, and flip-flops, and t-shirts with stupid sayings on them, or stupid sexual innuendos that weren't even all that funny, or all that sexual. When he did wear jeans they were baggy and stonewashed, and he still usually wore his horrible hobo sandals with them. Roxas, on the other hand, preferred girls pants, and black high top chucks, and had his ears pierced (his lobes were 2 gauges, he had his tragus pierced on both ears and a horizontal industrial in his left ear, he would proudly declare when someone asked, or was caught with their gaze traveling from his face to stare dumbly at his ears as they conversed.)

But they both let the argument drop there, having decided a long time ago that fashion was one thing they were never going to agree on. One of many.

Sora loved being outside and going to the beach and playing sports all while spending time with his ridiculously large group of friends and being incredibly friendly and happy. Roxas hated the outdoors- except for when it was raining- and preferred to stay inside by himself and complain about life on his weblog. He went to lots of parties, but those were so crowded with people and a vast majority of those people were so drunk or high that one-on-one conversation simply wasn't necessary and was difficult to obtain anyway. For him conversations, even with his few close friends, were better done with the safety of a middleman such as AIM or a text message on his beloved cell phone. In terms of music, Sora had never really cared much, and simply listened to whatever was popular with everyone else at the given time. Roxas judged his music by the intensity of the bass track behind it, and loved nothing more than the ridiculous system Demyx had installed in the back of his nineteen eighty-something-or-other piece of crap station wagon (those speakers were worth an amount of money much greater than that of the car itself.) Sora liked girls. Roxas liked boys (and girls, too, he had to admit, but he had always been partial to his own kind over the "fairer" sex.) They may have been twins, but they really couldn't possibly be anymore different.

Of course, it hadn't always been like that. But spending twelve years living in what might as well have been two completely different worlds could change people quite a bit.

When they were four their parents had divorced. Their mother had been the perfect wife; she was patient, loving and loyal. Their father, on the other hand had not quite met the good husband standards. He had cheated. They separated, and they realized that it was not economically feasible for either of them to keep both boys. So Sora had stayed in Destiny Islands with their mother and Roxas had moved away with their father.

Destiny Islands' main portion was large by island standards, but it still had that suburban small-town feel. It was full of rich middle-class yuppies who loved to talk about how much their beautiful beachfront property was worth and thought that half the population of the public high school casually smoking pot on the weekends was a huge teenage drug use problem.

But still everybody knew everybody and everybody was nice to everybody. Their mom didn't even bother to lock the door at night, a fact which, when he'd discovered it as a young child, had led Roxas to many a sleepless night at his mother's house. But then he'd gotten older and realized that locked door or not, breaking and entering was just not a problem people worried about in Destiny Islands.

The weather also fluctuated from sweltering tropical sun in the summer to a frigid coastal winter. Sora and his mother seemed to have grown accustomed to the weather, so they didn't own an A/C, and rarely turned the heat above sixty-three degrees in the winter. Sora claimed that the weather wasn't really a problem, because you could just jump in the ocean to cool off during the summer, and bundle up in the winter.

But Roxas hated swimming almost as much as he hated wearing layers.

He had moved to The World That Never Was. This was only the city's nickname, of course, but Roxas couldn't think of anyone he knew that actually referred to it by its actual name (he assumed that the depressing title had come from the cities lack of vegetation and abundance of concrete.) It was a giant city not far off the coast of the mainland, but life there was so completely the opposite of what it was in Destiny Islands. And the only methods of travel to Destiny Islands were either the bridge (and none of his friends owned a car stable enough to be depended for a few minutes on the highway, let alone going over the bridge) and the ferry with its very limited departure times. So even though the city and the islands were no more than ten minutes apart going by car, Roxas felt very isolated from the people and things he was comfortable with whenever he visited his mother and Sora.

That had been every other Christmas, replaced by Thanksgiving on the reverse years, in addition to the occasional long weekend and a few extended visits during the summer. But now it was different.

His mother was now engaged to Anthony, her boyfriend of three years who also happened to be the owner of the most popular restaurant on Destiny Islands (Which Roxas didn't really think was saying all that much, considering the size of the town, but it still made him quite rich.) This marriage was therefore going to make his mother considerably more wealthy, and therefore she now had enough money that she could give in to the guilt she'd been feeling for twelve years at forcing her two sons, twins no less, to be split up. A few months ago she had asked for Roxas to come and take permanent residence with her.

Custody battles were not easy for anyone involved. They required a lot of extraneous paperwork and visits with lawyers and social workers and wore down on everyone's nerves. And that was when they went smoothly. Roxas did not want to deal with the stress anymore than absolutely necessary, and he did not want to hurt his mother's feelings. He didn't think his dad would care. And so he had agreed to the change much easier than he had truly wanted to.

"So, uh, I usually sleep on the top bunk," Sora started after a few moments of silence, during which Roxas had returned to his aimless staring out the window, "But if you prefer that you can take it."

Over the years Sora's bedroom, once Sora and Roxas' bedroom and now so once again, had gone through several evolutions with him. It had gone from a dinosaur theme, to blitzball, and slowly morphed into the plainer blue motif that it currently possessed. But throughout all of the changes the bunk bed that had been there since Sora and Roxas had no longer needed to sleep in cribs had remained up against the wall in it's same corner. And whenever he visited, they had always switched off between the top and the bottom. It had started of course, because little kids always want the top bunk, and it was the compromise their mother had made in order to end their bickering. But as they got older Roxas had assumed it only continued because it was a sort of tradition between them. Apparently, despite being sixteen years old, Sora still seemed to think it mattered.

"No, I don't mind the bottom," Roxas replied, trying to ignore the sexual undertones of their conversation, "Hey, you guys have wireless, right?"

Sora nodded and Roxas grinned triumphantly, grabbing for the case which contained his laptop. He took it out and sat cross-legged on the bed, placing the computer in his lap. It had been a Christmas present from Axel. The jerk. Roxas scowled, if he weren't so dependent on the stupid thing, he would probably chuck it out the window.

_But it was a very nice present, and Axel probably spent a long time saving up the money to buy it,_ He thought with a pang of guilt. Axel was always so good to him; maybe he just needed another chance. Roxas called up AIM. He really wanted to talk to Larxene about this. But he'd barely had time to even scan his buddy list for her username when another message window popped up on the screen.

Dancing flamesVIII: Hey, baby 

For some reason, that sent Roxas over the edge. All thoughts of guilt and forgiving Axel were forgotten and replace by the anger he'd been previously experiencing, tenfold. With a vehement growl he closed out of his instant messenger without even replying, and slammed his laptop shut.

Sora had taken a seat on the floor, and now needed to look up slightly to make eye contact with Roxas, he cocked his head to the side a bit, "What's wrong?" Roxas just glared at him.

And then, the monophonic sounds of _Sandstorm_ came blasting out of Roxas' pocket.

Roxas knew who was calling him, but force of habit caused him to pull the phone out of his pocket and check anyway. Axel. He tossed the phone down on the bed, and covered it with a pillow to stifle the unwanted noise. It finally stopped, and thirty seconds or so later there was the familiar beep indicating that he had a new voice message. He picked the phone up, intending to delete the message without even listening, when it began to ring again. Axel again, that persistent asshole. Roxas moved to hit the ignore button, but his thumb stopped mid motion, hovering over it. For some reason he could not fathom, he was feeling compelled to answer the call.

Sora watched his brother's strange behavior curiously. It was clear that Roxas was absolutely furious about something. And he was having what looked like an extreme mental battle with himself over answering the phone. Finally, he seemed to give in and picked it up.

"Hello?"

_Hey baby, what's up? _Sora was able to pick up from the other end of the conversation.

"Oh, cut the bullshit, Axel."

Sora shuddered a bit. Roxas' tone was dangerous. Very dangerous. He'd sounded somewhat unsure when he had answered the phone, now he just sounded livid. At that point the conversation escalated very quickly, and Sora could only clearly hear half of it.

"Don't give me that, you know full well what happened. And _I_ know what happened. Larxene told me." Sora was starting to worry, he didn't know if he should try to comfort Roxas, or keep himself out of the conversation, since he didn't really know what was going on and it wasn't any of his business. He could see tears welling up in Roxas' eyes, and his brother was shaking with the effort to hold them back.

"You're _sorry_? You can't be serious! You cheated on me Axel! _Again_."

There was a lot of mumbling coming from the other end of the line, and Sora assumed it was some sort of shitty excuses, although he couldn't hear exactly what was being said. Roxas rolled his eyes, and one lone teardrop escaped and rolled its way down his cheek. He wiped it off with such force that Sora was surprised the skin of Roxas' cheek didn't go right with it.

"I don't even want to hear it. You're wasting my time, I'm hanging up!"

_No you're not. _The statement was rather pompous, but Axel also seemed to be correct. Roxas' voice was quavering a bit now, and he made no move to pull the phone away from his ear.

"You're just…UGH! I can't…Demyx! He's your best friend for Christ's sake! I didn't even know he liked guys!"

There was silence for a few long seconds until, and Sora could practically hear the smirk in the guys voice as he said it, _Heh…he doesn't._

That did it; the tears unleashed themselves. Roxas was full out sobbing now, and Sora wondered if he had done it on purpose, timed it for dramatic effect and guilt factor. From the way they were both behaving, it didn't seem as though it was the first time they'd had this argument.

"Wh-why do you do this to me? I'm s-so g-good to you, and all you ever do is…is fuck me over!" He had to stop for a few choked intakes of breath, "or m-more like fuck someone else! I h-hate you!"

"No…s-stop it! Don't t-tell me I don't mean it, I know what I…d-do and don't mean. We're over, Axel. And I mean it."

Sora heard a lot of frantic chattering from the other end of the line, but Roxas seemed to have found his resolve. He pulled the phone away from his ear, allowing Sora to hear _awe, come on ba- _before Roxas shut it rather forcefully.

Silence descended heavily upon the room, with the exception of Roxas' occasional uncontrolled chokes and spluttering. Sora tried to let it go, he really did. He wanted to sit down next to his brother and give him a hug and comfort him without saying anything, but Roxas was not a very huggy person, and Sora was afraid of just approaching the bed with all the bad vibes Roxas was emitting. His best bet, therefore, was to just sit there and not do anything, and more importantly not say anything, because he knew Roxas, and knew that he was very pissed, and was going to be very easily set off at this point. But unfortunately Sora really hated awkward silences, they made him extremely uncomfortable, and he'd never really been good with keeping his mouth shut. And as much as he knew that as soon as he opened his mouth he would regret it, he did anyway, "So…boyfriend troubles?"

Roxas made some sort of horrible, animalistic sound from deep in his throat, and cocked his arm to chuck his cell phone at Sora's stupid face, but exacted just enough self-control to stop himself right before its release. His cell phone was very expensive. Sora's head was very hard. Therefore, throwing his cell phone at Sora's head would be a very bad idea. Instead he grabbed a pillow and hurled it at Sora with enough force that he could be confident it would hurt just as much as if he were hit smack in the face with the small, plastic device. Judging by the strangled yelp that Sora let out, he felt that he had been successful.

"Boys!" Their mother called from downstairs, "Is everything alright up there?"

Both Roxas and Sora let out a simultaneous groan.

TBC

* * *

**A/N:**After at least a year's absence from the site I have returned with a brand new account! Not the most original way to return, since I've posted this on livejournal already for a while now, but that also means I've got several chapters done, so fast updates for a while at least. I appreciate reviews from everyone, compliments or otherwise, but I am not inclined to beg for them, so do so at your own discretion I suppose. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **Kingdom Hearts belongs to Square Enix and Disney, and that's definitely not me.

Warnings include the classically overdone alternate universe Kingdom Hearts cliché, boy love (though you won't be seeing much of it for a few chapters), and some language.

**Pairings: **Axel x Roxas, Sora x Kairi, and any other minor ones I decide to throw in.

Chapter Two

It had taken Roxas until dinnertime to even remotely compose himself, and even then his mother could still tell that something was bothering him. She nagged him for several moments, despite his reassurance that it was nothing. This continued until Anthony had finally silenced her, shrugging it off with a quick, "leave the boy alone, he's probably just homesick. This is a big change, after all." That was of course, completely wrong, but Roxas appreciated the man getting his mother off his back none-the-less. He really didn't want to talk about it.

He remained mostly silent throughout dinner, but thankfully he also had an excuse for this, as his mouth was full almost the entire time he was at the table. His mother was the chef at Anthony's restaurant, and she was very good at what she did. Her meals were far superior to Roxas' own macaroni and cheese, or a trip to McDonald's, which were his most typical options at home. Except for when Axel would take him out to dinner or come over and cook for him, he thought sourly. Suddenly he wasn't so hungry.

Roxas forced a dessert he no longer wanted to eat down his throat, and quickly retreated to the confines of his room once again. He'd had the foresight to leave his cell phone sitting on the bed when he went downstairs, not wanting it to constantly be disturbing dinner, and he found that this had been a good choice because he had fourteen missed calls, five new voicemails and a text message.

Axel didn't have text messaging. So he quickly deleted the five voicemails and opened the text.

_Hey, heard you gave carrot top the boot again. Wish I coulda been there._

He didn't even have to check the sender of the text, because Larxene was the only person he knew that had the balls to refer to Axel as carrot top, to his face or otherwise. She was a mutual friend, and the one who had originally introduced the two of them. She was also Axel's ex-girlfriend, which made her both the best and worst person to talk to at times like this. The best because she had gone through the same cheating problems that Roxas was always experiencing throughout her relationship with the redhead, and therefore she understood. She was the worst however, because she also found solace in the idea of Axel screwing with the emotions of someone other than herself. More often than not, she was the one who informed Roxas of Axel's infidelity, and the subsequent meltdowns and arguments were known to bring a smile to her face.

_With me or with him? It was over the phone._ He replied, smirking smugly as he typed the message. Sora walked into the room at that point and, seeing the triumphant look on his brother's face, was a little confused. Hadn't Roxas just been crying his eyes out all afternoon?

"Who're you talking to?"

"My friend Larxene." Sora sat down on the bed next to Roxas so he could read over his shoulder, and the blonde did not protest or push him away, so he remained.

"Ooh, a girl?" He asked, intrigued.

Roxas' phone beeped, indicating a new message, so he merely nodded absentmindedly in response to the question as he opened up the text and began to read it, _Ouch, that's cold. Demyx and I have a bet, by the way. He gives you two days and I say a week._

Roxas furrowed his brow, and Sora could see his eyes move across the screen of his phone as he reread the message with a confused look on his face. _Til what? _He typed quickly.

"So is this Larxene girl cute?" Sora asked in order to fill the silence until Roxas received the next message.

Roxas frowned a bit. Larxene was certainly good-looking, and he knew that was what his brother was asking but…cute was just not a word one generally used to describe her. "Err…yeah, I guess so."

Another beep. _Til you two get back together of course 3_

Roxas glared at the phone, although he knew Larxene couldn't actually see the malice in his expression. _We're not getting back together. It's over._

_Hehe, you're funny Roxy. And don't get me wrong the only reason I give you a whole week is because you live farther away from him now._

Roxas chose not to reply to that, and he knew that Larxene would get the message from his lack of response. Of course, he also knew that Larxene had been _trying_ to piss him off, which didn't calm him down at all. He slammed his cell phone down on the bedside table with an angry huff. Axel was a jerk. Larxene was a jerk. For all he knew they were together being jerks- and maybe doing other things he really didn't want to know about- right at this very minute.

"What's wrong now?" Sora asked, as tactful as ever. His emotions tended to coast on a pretty static level. He was happy, he was carefree. It was possible to get him angry or upset, but only if you got him really worked up. But within only a few hours he had seen his brother pass through every emotion on the spectrum. He didn't understand how Roxas could live like that.

He immediately regretted opening his mouth, of course. But it turned out not to matter, because Roxas didn't appear to be angry with him. He just sort of looked at Sora with indifference, "I just had to move away from the place that has been my home for twelve years. I left all of my friends behind. Most of said friends are total assholes. And I'm newly single. How would_you _feel?" Roxas deadpanned.

Sora did not think it mattered how he would feel in this situation, because he never would be. He had no intention of moving from the islands (not that Roxas had really had control over this aspect of his situation). He didn't consider any of his friends to be assholes, nor did he understand the concept of befriending someone you considered to be an asshole. And he had a fantastic girlfriend, with whom he did not foresee a breakup any time in the near future, especially not due to infidelity.

But he could assume that were all these terrible things to befall him at once by some horrible accident of fate he would be feeling pretty dreadful. "I'm sorry, Rox. If there was something I could do-"

Roxas shook his head for Sora to stop. "Don't worry about me. I'll get over it." He replied monotonously, and entirely unconvincingly.

When the alarm clock rang the next morning at six Roxas had already been awake for what seemed to him to be at least an hour. He had never been very fond of sleeping. He was more of the stay up late and wake up early type. Or the never go to bed type, but he didn't think that this would have been a wise choice on the night before his first day of classes.

Over the buzzing of the alarm clock, he could just barely discern the somewhat inhuman noises that Sora made as he stirred in the bed above, "Nnhh…god, what time is it?"

Roxas smirked, "No God here, just Roxas." He teased. Sora merely grunted, and it was not a happy sound at all. Apparently he lacked a sense of humor in the morning, "It's about six."

"…six? You set the alarm for _six?_" He asked incredulously, his voice containing a strange mix of anger and absolute horror.

"Mom said last night that we need to be at school by seven-"

"-and school is only five minutes away. That's an hour from now. You're crazy. I don't need to get up until 6:50. At the _earliest._"

Roxas wanted to protest that Sora was cutting it very close, but the bed creaked as his brother shifted his weight and then the only sound was the annoying drone of the clock. Sora was already sleeping again. Roxas turned off the alarm with a roll of his eyes and got out of bed.

Once Roxas had showered, eaten, gotten dressed and brushed his teeth it was about ten minutes of seven, and as if by some internal alarm Sora had stirred awake and gotten out of bed. He threw on the first clothes that he saw and brushed his teeth. They were out the door at 6:53. Sora clearly had being lazy down to an exact science, Roxas observed.

The school was close enough to their house to walk to and as Sora had said it only took a few minutes. He showed Roxas to the main office before heading off to his class. Roxas was given a schedule and a map and sent off as well.

That was the last he had seen of Sora that day, and it was now lunchtime. He scanned the cafeteria once more for a sign of his brother's messy brown spikes, but saw nothing. Roxas frowned. He hadn't expected to be in any of Sora's classes as most schools frowned upon putting siblings together in class when they could help it. But he had hoped they would be in the same lunch block, because Roxas knew no one else at the school closely, and sitting alone at lunchtime was the most socially awkward ordeal that he could go through on his first day of school.

But the longer he stood their looking around the cafeteria the more awkward he appeared, and so he finally gave up on the possibility of Sora running late for lunch and sat down at the end of a mostly unoccupied table.

"This is your first day, right?"

Roxas, who had been concentrating deeply on his meal for lack of anything better to do, whipped his head up to bark a nasty comeback to the person who had addressed him in this way, having jumped to the conclusion that they had come to tease him about his new kid status. But he was confronted by a pair of large, blue eyes and a nervous-yet-friendly smile which both suggested that their owner had absolutely no malevolent intentions in seeking him out. She had just come over to welcome him.

This threw Roxas off a bit, as he had not been expecting such outright kindness. "Err…yeah." He replied intelligently.

The affirmative answer seemed to give the girl a bit more confidence, and her smile broadened slightly, "My name is Naminé. Do you mind if I sit with you?"

"Huh? Oh…no, go ahead." He was making himself look like an idiot, but he couldn't help it, because the little blonde girl was the most utterly perplexing person he had ever met. For one thing her mannerisms, speech and posture gave off an air of extreme shyness, even though she had been the one to make an effort to come over and converse with him. But even more confusing was that he couldn't shake the feeling that he had seen the girl somewhere before. She was vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn't place why. Her name had not triggered any memories either, and he was quite positive that he hadn't ever known it before.

"I'm Roxas, by the way." He added, belatedly realizing he had forgotten to introduce himself.

Naminé nodded, "I know."

That statement had the effect of both thoroughly creeping Roxas out, and confirming his suspicion that this was not the first time he had encountered Naminé. But it did not answer his question of when they had met, and in fact raised even more questions because she clearly knew more about him than he her, at least in the respect that she knew his name. His first thought was that she was some kind of stalker, but he quickly reassured himself that there had to be a less disturbing explanation. For example, maybe she had been in one of his classes today. He had introduced himself in every one of them, after all.

"I'm a freshman this year, so I sort of know how you feel. Being new." She suddenly said, in what Roxas assumed was an attempt to explain why she had come over to speak with him.

Of course, her being a freshman pretty much killed his theory about them sharing a class. But he realized then that he was so busy with his inner monologue that the poor girl was practically having a one-sided conversation. "Oh, yeah. It's kind of tough." The truth was that he really didn't care, but for some reason he was compelled to make Naminé feel as though she was helping him.

His words seemed to have precisely this effect, because Naminé's confidence grew a little more, "What do you think so far? Of the school?"

Honestly he wasn't particularly impressed so far; the concept of school just wasn't something that impressed him in general. But he gave her a more socially acceptable answer, and their conversation took off from there. Naminé was quite talkative once he was able to get her going, but she wasn't intrusive at all and Roxas was able to talk to her comfortably. The rest of the lunch block passed quickly, the two of them chatting away the entire time.

At the end of the day Roxas wandered around a bit until he found Sora, and therefore, to his misfortune, had found Riku as well.

Their relationship with Riku had begun on the playground when they were little kids and he was the slightly older, slightly larger resident bully kid. When he pushed Roxas, Roxas had just pushed right back. But Sora had turned out to be a much better victim, he had and cried and wondered how anyone could ever be so horrible. So Riku had mostly left Roxas alone during their childhood, but had targeted Sora right along with all the other kids. Eventually, this led to Riku bullying Sora more than he did the other kids, which led to Riku giving up on everyone else to concentrate his torture on Sora, which led, by some chain of events that Roxas did not understand, to Riku and Sora becoming best friends.

But apparently Riku only befriended people he knew that he could push around if necessary, because throughout all of this he had retained a dislike for Roxas. The feeling was mutual.

"Hey Roxas!" Sora called happily. Riku and Roxas exchange curt nods, and there was an unspoken decision that no further pleasantries would be necessary between the two. Sora, who had never noticed the contempt between his brother and best friend, did not notice it then.

"Where's Kairi?" Riku asked, and Roxas was thankful to him for breaking the awkward silence that had been beginning to envelope the group, though he would never have admitted to it.

Kairi was Sora's female best friend, and his girlfriend of about a year and a half. But they were one of those couples that people had known would get together eventually for their entire lives, and were just waiting for them to stop beating around the bush and get to it. Their parents had probably been planning their wedding since they were five. Kairi had always liked Sora, and Sora had always liked Kairi.

It was also the opinion of the general public that Riku had always liked Kairi as well.

Riku was one of the captains of Destiny High's three time tournament champion blitzball team (a team that was well on its way to a four consecutive win for Riku's final year in the school), he was in the top ten of his class, he was rich, he was extremely attractive (again, this was something that Roxas would never admit to Riku even if his life depended on it), and he had achieved all of this without barely even lifting a finger.

Naturally this combination meant that every single girl in the entire school, with the one exception of Kairi, wanted to date him. Most of them had their chance, too, because Riku rarely turned down an invitation for a relationship. Of course, Riku also rarely stayed in a relationship for more than a month.

Most people claimed that this was because he loved Kairi, and was in search of the girl that could help him to forget about the one he couldn't have, with no success. Riku insisted that he harbored no jealous feelings towards the relationship of his two best friends. Roxas refused to believe him.

Riku was not a touchy-feely kind of person, he considered himself way too manly for things like hugging, and mostly anyone would receive a punch in the face for trying. But Sora loved to give hugs, and not only did Riku never reject the gesture from his best friend, but Roxas couldn't help but notice that he also never pulled away first. He was always taking advantage of Sora's excessively ticklish nature. And whenever Sora spoke, or did anything else for that matter, Riku always paid him the utmost attention; at least, that was what the intent stare Riku was always giving the brunette suggested.

People were absolutely right when they said that Riku was in love with his best friend; but what Roxas seemed to be the only one to see was that it wasn't Kairi that Riku was in love with, but Sora.

Riku was gay, he was hiding it, and Roxas knew it. He hadn't said anything yet, though, not even to Riku, because it was leverage over the boy that he wanted to save for later. Just in case.

"Kairi has plans with Selphie today," Sora explained, "So it's just the three of us."

_Well, won't Riku like that, _Roxas thought smugly, _just him an- _"Wait, three?"

"Of course! We aren't going to leave you out, Roxas. You can come hang out at Riku's house with us."

The look on Riku' face suggested that he'd had every intention of leaving Roxas out, and being perfectly honestly Roxas didn't think he would have minded it that way. But neither had the heart to tell Sora.

Being that The World that Never Was was a city, most of the people who inhabited it lived in apartments. Being rich meant living in a really big, nice apartment, or maybe in a house. In Destiny Islands, being rich meant living in a palace.

At least, Roxas had always thought the huge house just a few hundred yards away from the beach was a palace, when he was younger. After all, it was the largest and most architecturally intricate place of residence he'd ever seen in person, and there were not exactly any real palaces around for him to compare it to. As a result, the house had always fascinated him when he was little. When he had found out that it was the place where Riku lived, his pride insisted that the fascination end immediately. Thus the first time that Roxas had visited Riku's house, he had done so with the attitude of someone trying really hard not to like something. But that was no longer a problem because on that first visit he had gained several legitimate reasons to not like Riku's house.

Riku's house was just about the craziest place he had ever been.

Riku's family was foreign, and even though they had moved to Destiny Islands years before he was ever born they all still spoke mostly their native language at home. His father was some sort of big businessman, so he spoke English quite fluently, but his mother had not managed to catch on to the language well even after over twenty years of living there.

Riku had three older brothers, all of whom were adults (legally, at least, although mentally they all left something to be desired on the maturity scale) and one younger sister who was Roxas and Sora's age.

His two oldest brothers had already moved out of the house. But the next, Kadaj, still lived at home. He had been four when Riku was born and, apparently an attention craver since birth and extremely clingy to his mother, had immediately resented Riku for relieving him of his youngest child status. Their relationship was not that of sibling rivalry, but all out war. The two of them could not be in the same room without an argument erupting, and then they would start screaming at each other in a language that Roxas did not understand. Sora claimed that through process of elimination he had learned a handful of colorful explicitives from all of their arguments.

The family was obscenely rich, so they were also all spoiled. None of them really behaved in the full out rich kid stereotype, but they all had their tendencies. Such as Riku's better-than-thou attitude and Kadaj being bratty and self-centered. Roxas had barely ever seen Riku's eldest brothers, but according to Sora one was a bit of a diva and the other was a crybaby.

Fuu, Riku's younger sister, was the one shred of normalcy in the family, if only because she didn't speak often enough to act as strange as her brothers. When Roxas had been forced by his brother or mother to accompany Sora to Riku's house (they thought he would feel left out) she was his salvation. They weren't friends at all, and truthfully they barely even talked when they were together, but she gave Roxas an excuse to not be around Sora and Riku, and Fuu didn't really care whether or not he was around. They basically went about their own business while the other just happened to be in the same room.

"No one else is home today," Riku explained happily, "Kadaj has classes and Fuu's making up a test. Mum's probably around somewhere but she'll leave us alone. We've got the whole place to ourselves, basically."

Roxas wondered why Riku bothered getting so excited about his siblings not being home, because the house was so big you could avoid all four other members of the family and still have plenty of room to yourself. He personally didn't like the news of being alone, because it meant he didn't have Fuu to hideout with, and he was uncomfortable being alone in other people's houses. But Riku was probably even more upset, he considered with a certain amount of satisfaction, because this was supposed to be his time alone with Sora, not Sora and Roxas. That alone made it worth sticking around and watching Riku and Sora play videogames until their eyes bled, which was all they ever did.

**Notes:** I'm doing pretty well, two updates in one day today . Here's chapter two: slightly longer than chapter one although still not much action, and still no Axel. Sorry about that! He will show up next chapter (perhaps even with a bang), I promise!

All feeback, positive or negative, is appreciated and encouraged, though at least try to be tasteful about it if you feel the need to criticize, 'kay? Oh also, I can't even remember if this chapter was beta'd or not. So if you find any typos or grammatical errors feel free to point them out, I'd appreciate it.


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